Diane Birch says that while she was filming her offbeat music video “Valentino,” “I wanted to kill myself.” But now that the production is done, she’s thrilled with the results.

The singer-songwriter-piano player made her debut last year with a charming pop music CD titled “Bible Belt.”

She just released a new video for “Valentino,” a song off of the album. Dennis Liu, who has worked with Sia and the Bird and the Bee, directed the clip.

The video is a conceptual piece. In the clip, we see Birch skipping around a simple set that includes a couch and a screen. Birch nimbly changes clothes as she moves to the song. The video’s hook is that it was performed all in one take during a long day of filming in Brooklyn.

Birch says she shot 62 takes of the video, and take 57 was the one that was used. Because of the difficulty involved in changing outfits and hitting her marks and doing it all in one take without edits, she was forced to reshoot repeatedly. “We were on this quest that it had to be done in one take,” she says. “It’s easy to cut and edit but it’s not easy to hit your marks. That’s the beauty of one take.”

The clip showing the making of the video may be as interesting as the video itself, as the viewer gets a chance to see the direction and choreography that went into pulling the production off.

Birch, who had a strict upbringing and moved around a lot growing up, says she has long been drawn to the unusual. She says the song “Valentino” is about an imaginary friend she had as a child. Her pretend companion was from the 18th century; Birch used to dress up in lace to play with her fantasy buddy. The video is a reflection–but not a literal one–of the song’s odd subject.

“I think there’s a million ways to tape this video, and I like things that are a little bit wacky,” she says.

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